Bradley Cooper Selects Music From WEST SIDE STORY, CANDIDE & More For MAESTRO Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Maestro is set to be released on November 17, featuring music from West Side Story, Candide, On the Town, and more.

Directed, written, produced by, and starring Bradley Cooper in the title role, opposite Carey Mulligan, Maestro is a towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.

Candide will be represented on the soundtrack by its overture, "Paris Waltz," and "Make Our Garden Grow."

From On the Town, the film will feature "I Get Carried Away / You've Got That Look (That Leaves Me Weak" and "Lonely Town. Pas de deux."

The prologue from West Side Story is also included.

All the music in the film was chosen by Cooper, and the new recordings on the soundtrack were made by the London Symphony Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who also worked closely with the actor-director as conducting consultant before and throughout the film-making process. 

The album also presents excerpts from works as varied as Mass, Chichester Psalms and Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, among others. It also includes music by Beethoven, Mahler, Schumann and Walton, used to illustrate key moments in Bernstein’s career and marriage.

The album will be released digitally on November 17,  2023, and on CD and vinyl on December 1. A taster track featuring an excerpt from the Finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection, with soprano Rosa Feola, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, the London Symphony Chorus and the LSO, conducted by Cooper, comes out on October 27. Maestro is released in cinemas in the US on November 22, in the UK on November 24, and in the rest of the world between December 1 and 8. It will then arrive on Netflix on December 20. 

“Many an opera and classical album were playing in our house growing up,” recalled Bradley Cooper, who was speaking before the current SAG-AFTRA strike. “I spent hours conducting an imaginary orchestra to the best of my 8-year-old ability. There was one recording of Leonard Bernstein on heavy rotation. So the pilot light I needed to make Maestro turned on many years before I actually came across the project.”

Cooper, who also co-wrote Maestro with Josh Singer, worked closely with Bernstein’s three children, Jamie, Nina and Alexander in preparation for the filming. To make his portrayal of both the man and the artist as authentic as possible, he immersed himself in the classical world, spending hours with the New York Philharmonic and other orchestras, and learning from conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, Gustavo Dudamel, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Listen to the track from the Finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Bradley Cooper, here: